


Videre

by dragonashes



Series: Quintessence: Undertale One-shots [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind Sans, Fluff and Angst, Gaster fan theories, Gen, Implied evil Gaster, Pacifist Frisk, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8636098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonashes/pseuds/dragonashes
Summary: Frisk wonders why her new friend Sans is unable to see.  Sans finds compassion in an unlikely place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This Sans is completely blind, but can use his magic as a kind of echolocation mechanism. (Because if humans can figure out how to 'hear' their environments, I think Sans can figure something out. He'd keep losing a cane, anyways.)
> 
> "Videre" is a Latin word meaning "to see." I like the sound, and I think it fits well.

“So you really can’t see anything at all?”

Sans turned towards the child, the echoes of his magic painting a picture of the frown on her face.  He considered the wisdom of revealing a weakness to a human, but the kid genuinely sounded curious.  She had no EXP or LV, so she wasn’t a threat...maybe.

Besides, being underestimated wouldn’t hurt, would it?

“nope.  not a thing.”

“But you know where I am!  How do you even _do_ that?”

“mmmmmagic.”

The kid huffed.  He could hear something impact with a thud - the kid’s shoe against a tree trunk, if he guessed correctly.

“seriously, why are you so worked up over this?  iris you’d just leaf it alone if it’s punna worry you so much.”

“...That was terrible.”

Sans could hear the smile in her voice nonetheless.

“Really, though, Sans...what happened?”

“waddaya mean?”

“Pap - Papyrus - said that you weren’t always...like this.  I figured, since you know about colors and all, but...he wouldn’t say what happened.  He just said that it was really bad and it hurt you.  He said...he said it still hurts you sometimes.  I just...I don’t want you to be hurt.  You and Pap have both been so nice to me!  Is it something I can fix?”

The way she said ‘fix’ made Sans’s joints tense.  He knew what she was referring to.  “no.  there’s nothing you - or that _other_ anomaly - can do about this.  don’t even try.  don’t you _ever_ reset for something like that, ya hear me?”

Silence.  Even his magic was quiet, curled too tightly around him to pick up on any movement and flickering with his anger.

“...kid, if you’re nodding again, i still can’t see you.”

There was a huff, then: “I hear you.”

“promise me, kiddo.”

“But _you_ never make promises!”

“that’s ‘cuz i’m an old lazybones.  i’m a terrible influence.  don’t grow up to be like me.  now, promise me you won’t reset to try to ‘fix’ old sansy.”

“I promise I won’t reset to try to fix your eyes...if you tell me what happened.”

“i guess that’s about as good as i’m gonna get, huh.”  His magic relaxed enough to show him the kid’s nod, though she quickly followed with a brief hum of acknowledgement anyways.  He turned around and headed back towards Snowdin.

“W-wait!  Aren’t you gonna tell me what happened?”

“not out here.  the trees have ears sometimes.”

The kid amused herself the entire way back to town examining each tree for phantom ears.  Sans was glad she didn’t see the being that really was listening, stalking them through the forest, a chilling soulless void just barely within his sensory range.

He led her behind his house and into his basement.  He could _feel_ her excitement.  Apparently she hadn’t explored very much, if the basement was a surprise.

He automatically checked the room - the machine, his work papers, his desk - but everything was in order.  He motioned the kid into the desk chair and clambered up to sit on the desk.  His legs dangled off the edge.

“so.  ya wanna know what happened to my eyes.”

He felt her nod again.

“it’s...not a pretty story, but i guess it’s got a good moral.  i don’t mind tellin’ ya - it’ll serve as a warning if nothing else - just...don’t share it around, ‘kay?  i could get in some trouble for doing what i did.”

“Okay.  I won’t tell.”

“you know the royal scientist, right?  dr. alphys.”

“Yeah.”

“Ever heard of a guy named W. D. Gaster?”

He heard the chair rattle as the kid sat up, startled by his change in speech patterns.  “N-no.”

“I see.”

“W-wait.  The name sounds familiar...almost like someone asked about him?  Or told me about him?  I can’t...aaah…”

“Take it easy, there, buddy.  Don’t hurt yourself.  It might be easier once I explain, but for most folks anything related to Gaster gets a bit...funny.  And not in the good way.”

“O-okay?”

“Now, W. D. Gaster was the Royal Scientist before Alphys.  Not much remains of him, or most of his research team, but it’s probably just as well.  The guy was brilliant, but…”  This was a terrible idea, Sans realized.  How was he going to explain _Gaster_ to a _child?_  “But...he wasn’t very...nice.”

“He hurt people?”

“...Yeah.”

“He hurt you.”

“Not...the way you’re thinking, but...yeah.”

“Did he...did he hurt Papyrus?”

Sans took a deep breath.  “...Yeah.”

“Then I’m _glad_ he’s gone.”

The kid’s voice was absolutely _vicious_ in ways no creature made of kindness and magic could manage, and Sans felt a surge of something deep and protective in response.  “Y-yeah.  Me too.  Problem is...I wasn’t at the time.”  He took another breath, trying to focus on reality - the desk, the floor, the kid - instead of the static that was creeping into his mind.  “See...it’s funny how your mind can play tricks on you.  When you’ve only lived...a certain way all your life, you come to expect it.   _Like_ it, even.  If something changes - even if it’s a change for the better - it’s...it’s sometimes hard to see it, ya know?”

It was a rhetorical question, so Sans was surprised at the quiet, “Yeah, I know,” that followed.  And the voice _was_ knowing - knowing in a way he hoped he never heard again.

He reached out with his magic towards the kid, and felt her reaching back - clumsily, instinctively, like Papyrus before he learned to control his magic.  It met in the empty space between their bodies, and he felt an understanding - an unexpected kinship - with this little human child.  Protectiveness surged, his big brother tendencies that had lain dormant since Papyrus was old enough to take care of the both of them coming to the forefront once again.

Surprise and hesitant, heartfelt gratitude reached back, and Sans realized that the kid had _felt that._  Embarrassed, he gently cut off the connection and coughed awkwardly into his sleeve.

“A-anyways, so...yeah.  Paps and I lived in a lab in the Core when we were babybones.  Long story short, W. D. Gaster was...one of the few people we knew.  We didn’t...didn’t exactly get out much.  He wasn’t very nice - I get that _now_ \- but he was...kinda all we had.

“He died when Paps was still pretty young.  The Core - that big machine off in Hotland that powers the whole Underground - that was his greatest creation.  It runs on geothermal energy - lava, basically - and magic.  Void magic, specifically.  That’s...where things went wrong.

“See, void magic isn’t like other magic - the magic that holds us monsters together, or the magic we use in battle, or even fire magic we use for cooking.  It’s almost...alive, in a way.  Hungry.  It wants to consume _everything_ .  Now, when you’re working on powering a huge reactor that has a lot of unexpected waste...yeah, a bottomless trash can sounds like a _great_ idea.  That’s what we used it for, at first.  But then...Gaster found out about...what _else_ it could do.

“He became interested, then _obsessed_ .  He thought he was learning to control void magic, but those of us who worked with him could see that it was the other way around.  The void was learning to control _him_ .  It was _devouring_ him, one moment at a time.”

The pair shared a shiver.

“Gaster’s experiments led him to spend a lot of time in the Core, the largest source of void magic in...well, probably in this plane of existence.  No one else was crazy enough to _try_ to work with something like that, as far as we could tell.  So one day - just an ordinary day - Gaster decided to do another one of his crazy experiments in the Core.  He...I don’t know if he forgot, or if something was sabotaged, or if it was just a freak accident, but...the dampeners he used to buffer the void magic didn’t engage.  He and his team walked into the primary void chamber in the Core without anything at all to protect them.  It’s...well, it’s amazing that any of us walked out of there alive.”

“You were part of his team.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, he wanted to...keep me close.  Kinda...kinda threatened Paps if I didn’t help him.  So I did my best.  I was good at it, too; and being small was really helpful when getting around certain areas of the Core.  It’s probably the only reason I wasn’t swept into the Void with...with everyone else."

“The Void?  You mean void magic?”

“Kinda.  The Void is where void magic comes from.  It’s like...like another dimension, sitting alongside our own, like two rivers flowing in the same direction.  Normally the two would never touch - I’m not sure why it’s even _there;_ that wasn’t really the focus of our research - but when you have a near-infinite power source you can do some pretty crazy stuff.”

“That’s pretty scary.”

“You have _no idea_ .  Anyways, Gaster and the rest of our team got pulled into the Void.  Now me?  I was...wasn’t always as calm a guy as I am now.  I freaked out.  Worse than Paps on laundry day.  In the moments after the accident, I could _feel_ them slipping away.  I was forgetting who they had been, their names, their faces...everything.  Worse, I could feel the Core slipping away.  It was melting out of existence.”

“What??  Why?”

“Gaster designed it.  The Void didn’t just take his body, it took...everything.  People’s memories of him.  Records.  Notes he left.  He was the one who designed the Core, almost in its entirety.  Without a designer it couldn’t really exist, now could it?  It would just be a lump of metal with no reason to be there.

“Problem was, there’s a _lot_ connected to the Core.  Even back then, hundreds of monsters lived and work in and around the Core.  If the Core went, all of that - all of _them_ \- would go with it.  Even Papyrus.  Maybe even the king.

“I wasn’t thinking about any of that, though.  It’s kinda embarrassing, but...I was scared, ya know?  I’d just seen the closest thing I had to a parent get caught up in an existential black hole.  I could feel people slipping away, I could feel reality crumbling around me, but...I just wanted my crummy dad back.

“I realized, then, that I could _feel_ the Void.  It hadn’t gotten me - not entirely - but it had still gotten...something.  A hold on me, somehow.  I could f-feel it, whispering to me.  It said I could make a choice.  A trade, if you would.”

“...Equivalent exchange.”

“...Kinda, yeah.  Sure.  Where’d you hear that?”

“There’s an anime I used to watch with my Nana.  It’s about two kids - brothers - who try to bring their mom back after she died.  Their magic works on equivalent exchange, trading one thing for another equal thing.”

“That’s...wow, that’s really creepy.  I guess...it’s kinda like that?  Um...so...yeah.  I heard the Void, the Void asked what I wanted, and I said...gosh, I said...I just wanted to see _him_ again.  Just to _see_ him again.  What a joke, huh?  I should’ve been more careful, but I was...I was…”

He felt arms around his ribs before he realized the kid had moved.  He tensed, caught up in the past, but the kid had latched on pretty tight.  One hand came up to pry her away, but...he couldn’t find the strength to do it.  The hand rested on her back instead.  His other hand came up to pry the first hand off, but got caught on the kid’s sweater instead.

That’s all it was.

He definitely wasn’t hugging this human kid back.

He definitely wasn’t _crying_ to some _child_ over his own bad life choices.

...This really, really was a bad idea.

“No, I’m glad you told me.”

...He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.  “Heh...well, now you know.  Stupid little Sansy traded his eyes to be able to see...see _him._  And I can.  I _can_ see him.

“He - the Void - is the _only_ thing I can see.”

The arms around Sans’s ribs held on tighter.  He felt his bones creak, felt the ever-present ache that lingered there after the Void robbed him of most of his health and potential, but it was a good pain.  It reminded him that he was _alive_ , that someone (a very small, _very_ _powerful_ someone) involved in this time-space mess _knew_ and _understood_ and _didn’t care,_ and hugged him anyways.

“it...it worked out okay in the end, ya know.  whatever i did - whatever the void did - it anchored the remains of gaster to reality.  the core stabilized, though there are some pieces missing that were related to gaster’s personal experiments.  some of the old man’s notes stayed.  i gathered what i could.”  He gestured to the blueprints stacked on the desk next to him.  “me ‘n paps are still here.  we’d probably have dissolved into nothing too, or been sucked into the void.  so...it’s fine, yeah?  it’s...it’s fine.”

He could tell the kid didn’t believe him.  Sans didn’t really believe himself, to be honest.

There was more to say - about Gaster’s plots, about that _thing_ in the woods, about Sans himself - but Sans couldn’t bring himself to let go.  Not when his magic was painting a picture of tears running down the kid’s face as she cried for all he’d lost.  He could feel the tears pooling in his own empty eye sockets as well, sending trails of magic down his cheekbones.

It was...fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I’ve had an idea of a blind (or blind and deaf) Sans bouncing around for a while, and inspiration hit. I've seen several examples of a half-blind Sans (see Zarla's "Handplates" comics on Tumblr, Deviantart, and LiveJournal) but nothing about a completely blind Sans. A world of thanks to all my blind and visually impaired friends, without whom this story would be a sad shadow of itself.
> 
> This didn’t originally have anything to do with Fullmetal Alchemist. I wanted Sans’s sight loss to be related to Gaster’s accident in the Core, and this grew out of it. Then Frisk-in-my-head popped in and said, “Oh! I’ve seen this before! It’s Fullmetal Alchemist!” I decided to roll with it, because this Frisk is totally a little baby weeaboo.
> 
> I think Sans would be irrationally freaked out by anime in general after this. He probably has some pointed questions for Alphys. I don’t think Alphys has ever seen enough of FMA to connect the dots, though.
> 
> In unrelated news: Frisk’s Nana (grandmother on her mother’s side) is a young grandma. She’s also one of the coolest people on the planet.
> 
> But yes! "Videre" is just one of many one-shots I've written. If you like this story and want more random Undertale short stories, please follow my author profile or the series "Quintessence: Undertale One-shots." I'll be posting on Wednesdays and Saturdays.


End file.
